


half-light, jack-knife

by iceberry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Episode: s15e20 Carry On Coda, Gen, Good Parent Sam Winchester, Grief/Mourning, Jack Kline as God, Sibling Death, kinda sorta?, sam praying to jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27762586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceberry/pseuds/iceberry
Summary: It’s been the longest Sam has ever gone without actively taking on a case himself since Stanford - one year, five months, and 18 days exactly - when he gets the phone call. Or rather, when his son gets the phone call.(nearly two decades after dean's death, sam gets a call from someone he hasn't heard from since a case ended in tragedy. his son comes with him to help pick up the pieces.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester Jr. (Supernatural: Carry On) & Sam Winchester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 51





	half-light, jack-knife

**Author's Note:**

> as pointed out in the description fic takes place a While after dean’s death, so it’s in the future, which is only addressed like once in a joke. i don’t have the mental bandwith to imagine kansas in 2038. i have a panic attack imagining MYSELF in 2038. supernatural is perpetually in 2008 imo
> 
> sam's blurry wife does make a cameo in this but she is deeply insignificant to the plot, sorry amber i love you and will eventually write something about you

Sam is fifty-one when he finally decides that the world might not need him out in the field anymore. His body’s ached for years, and though he knows that his body, the vessel of a long-dead archangel, is sturdier than most, he’s still human. There’s still monsters - there will _always_ be monsters, Jack was serious about being hands-off - but there’s close to no demons now that Rowena is in charge, and as far as Sam’s been able to tell, there’s no new looming apocalypse coming. It’s a haunting of all things, a simple salt-and-burn with Claire that made his back hurt for a _week_ straight after digging up a grave, that made him decide that maybe he’s better suited helping the way Bobby did. With lore, and books, and helping maintain covers for investigation that have been harder and harder to pull off in recent years.

So it’s been the longest Sam has ever gone without actively taking on a case himself since Stanford - one year, five months, and 18 days exactly - when he gets the phone call. Or rather, when his son gets the phone call.

“There’s someone calling you, dad.”

Sam looks up with surprise, pushes his glasses back up his nose as he sits up in his chair and looks at Dean. He hadn’t heard the teenager come down the stairs to the basement, and he’s not sure if the book he’s reading was really that engrossing or if his hearing is going. Dean looks a little surprised too as he holds out a phone out over Sam's desk - an _old_ phone, Sam realizes as he takes it, with a cracked screen and loose glass, _Why do I still have that one sitting around? Who still has that number?_

He takes it from his son, brings it up to his ear with the strange feeling that the call itself might be a relic of the past, not just the phone. “Hello?”

“Wincheeester,” the voice says, drawn out and tainted with the sound of a smug smile, though there’s something a little hollow about it. It’s distantly familiar and unplaceable but not unnerving, and he furrows his brow. 

“Sorry, who is this?”

“Max Banes.” Sam's eyes widen, and he looks up at Dean, who’s been waiting for further instructions. There’s a lot he’s told Dean about, but the times that he and his brother failed people - those are the stories he lingers on the least, except as examples for what not to do. The name _Banes_ brings back memories of a failure he thinks should be properly explained, not heard about through half of a phone conversation. _We’ll talk later_ , he mouths at his son, and waves him back towards the stairs. Dean gives him a weird look and turns around with a shrug. 

"Max," Sam replies "It's good to hear from you -"

"I need your help."

 _That_ is _how these kinds of phone calls usually go_ , Sam reminds himself a few minutes later as he turns the smartphone around in his hands, hung up on after Max gave him an address and a promise to explain more in person. It’s just been awhile since he got one. The phone itself makes him smile a little, more out of nostalgia than anything else - there’s a slight sticky patch on the back that at some point must have read _FBI_ , _DEA, CDC_ , scrawled out in his brother’s handwriting on masking tape. Most of these had gotten thrown out as he’d gradually dealt with his brother’s things in the years after his death, replaced or rerouted to other hunters. Sam figures maybe he’d kept this one out of sentimentality or Dean took it out of one of the boxes he’s brought back from the bunker. He slips it in his back pocket as he stands up.

Amber is sitting on the back porch with a book in her lap and a glass of wine when Sam comes upstairs, and he lets himself watch her for a second before pushing open the screen door. The fact that he’d found someone - a _civilian_ , even - who was willing to put up with not only his baggage, but also the burden of knowing what’s out there still seems like a miracle sometimes. _Out of your league_ , he imagines his brother saying to him sometimes. Never cruelly, just in the way he’d say things with a smile in his voice. Maybe one day he’ll actually get to hear it.

“Are you just gonna stand there looking at me or are you gonna get me another glass of wine?” Sam smiles at the back of her head, and turns around to grab the bottle of wine off the counter before he steps outside into the evening humidity.

“I’m gonna have to leave for a few days,” he says as he tops off her glass and puts the bottle down on the small side table it’s resting on.

“You haven’t been on a hunt in a while,” she says, and closes her book to look at him with concern and a question. 

“I know,” he says, and leans against the porch railing. “Almost a year and a half. But it’s not a real hunt. I don’t think so, anyways.”

“That’s specific,” she says drily. Sam half-laughs at that.

“Yeah, I know. An old friend called, asked for help. When I pressed, he said it was kind of a personal issue, and… we let him down, way back when,” Sam admits, looks out across the yard, at the shadows of trees stretching out towards the house in the half-light. “His name is Max, he’s a witch, his mom was too. Good people, but... we didn’t save her or his sister. So I feel like I owe it to him to at least show up.”

“How long will it be?”

“Two, three days at most, I hope,” Sam says. “He’s up in Minnesota, so I figure I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

“Can I come?” Dean asks, and Sam’s head turns to the screen door, where his son has apparently been listening into the conversation for some time.

“Dean, it’s a hunt,” he starts, but his son is already walking out onto the porch to make his case.

“Is it? You just told mom it was more of a personal thing, and you said if I wanted to hunt when I was older, you wouldn’t stop me,” Dean says, counting his point off on his finger like he has several more ready to go. And knowing Dean, he probably does.

“Fifteen isn’t that much ‘older,’ Dean,” Sam says. “And why all the sudden?” 

“You said this guy’s a witch,” Dean says, and counts it off on another finger. “I still haven’t gotten to meet a good witch, besides you, and you’ve said yourself that you’re not _really_ a witch, you just know some magic.”

“I know you want to know more about magic. Trust me, I know. But we're taking that stuff slow for a reason, and I don’t know what I’m walking into, Dean,” Sam says, crossing his arms, trying to look like he’s not being swayed at all. 

“But that’s just hunting, right? You don’t ever know what you’re walking into, you say that all the time. So why not let me go on this one, since it’s probably pretty safe, instead of having my first time end up being really dangerous?” 

Sam inhales sharply, and glances at Amber for guidance; all he gets in return is an empathetic look. “Let your mom and I talk about it. I’ll let you know in a few minutes.”

Dean walks back inside dutifully, and Sam peeks around the corner of the doorway to make sure he’s out of earshot before he looks back at his wife. “What do you think?”

“I think that I trust you,” she says, and Sam sighs. Part of him was hoping she would put her foot down and take the choice off his shoulders, but that’s not who he married. “I worry every time you go after something, the idea that Dean might want to do the same thing when he grows up keeps me up at night. But I knew what I was getting into. And how old were you the first time you went hunting?”

“Nine, but I’m the poster child for why that was a bad idea,” Sam says.

“But his point about it never being safe...” Amber prompts, somehow knowing exactly what Sam is thinking as he rubs the back of his neck.

“Is a good point, unfortunately,” Sam says, and sighs again. He’s trying to untangle all the threads of thought he’s caught between: it obviously could be dangerous, if Dean grows up to be enough of a Winchester that he decides he can’t stay away from hunting while he knows what’s out there he needs to know what he’s doing, _I won’t be around forever to show him_ , Max hasn’t given any indication he’s untrustworthy. “Alright. I’ll let him know he’s gotta get up at 5:30,” he finally says, and leans down to give Amber a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll keep him safe, I promise,” he says.

“I know you will,” she says, and Sam remembers that it never stops being terrifying to have someone put that much faith in you. He never really forgot.

◎

"It's a ten hour drive, but we can probably do it in eight,” Sam says, then realizes he probably shouldn’t say that to the kid who’s about to get his permit. Dean throws his overnight bag in the trunk, and slides into the passenger seat with a yawn.

For the first few years after Dean died, Sam hated driving. Being in the car - any car, but the Impala to the point where he just _couldn’t_ drive her anymore - was just a cutting reminder of his loss. Sometimes it felt like he’d spent more of his life in a car than out of it, and most of that time was with his big brother. Driving alone was bad, driving with someone else was almost worse; he’d look over and see Jody, or Charlie, or Eileen, and have to fight past the instinct that something was _wrong_. He flew cross-country for a few cases. Somehow avoiding it was worst of all.

Gradually, it got easier. He tried to avoid classic rock stations on long hauls, the Impala stayed covered up in their garage (or before that, parked at Jody’s). In a weird way, the anxiety of tightening a car seat for an infant was a relief - still stressful, but at least less soaked in a grief he was worried he’d never be able to shake off. 

And when Dean could talk, it got _much_ easier, easier than even driving with his wife or the friends he’s known for years. It’s different, but driving with his son next to him feels _right_ again, the kind of right Sam feels deep in his chest. They talk at home, but there’s something about Dean sitting in the passenger’s seat that makes Sam feel less self-conscious about saying or asking the wrong thing as a parent. 

“Have you been keeping up with friends now that school’s out?” Sam asks when they’re a stone’s throw from the Missouri border. He knows his son - and what it’s like to be a teenage boy - well enough to give Dean some time to wake up before trying to initiate any real conversation. “Get your shoes off the dashboard.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but complies and lets his shoes fall to the floorboard with a _thump_. “I guess. I talk to Elliot a lot since they live close to us, and Amy’s having a pool party next week that mom wants me to go to.”

“Do you want to go?”

“I guess. It sounds kinda boring, and I only really know her.”

“No one’s giving you any crap, right?” Sam asks after a minute of thinking, or maybe reading too much into Dean’s words, and looks sideways at his son to watch for a reaction.

“Are you asking me if I’m being bullied?” Dean says, looks up from his phone; he looks like he’s about to roll his eyes again, and Sam sighs preemptively before he gives him a real answer. “Nah. People think I’m weird, but no one cares. They think my tattoo is cool,” and that makes Sam smile a bit.

“Did you tell them your _cool_ dad wanted you to get it?”

"I said I snuck off with a friend when we visited Sioux Falls for a weekend and didn't tell you about it,” Dean says, and Sam smiles because it’s _halfway_ true; the tattoo artist Alex has been seeing was willing to look the other way at Dean’s age, but Sam had let his son squeeze his hand the whole way through. “Why do you ask if I’m being bullied? Do I seem like, depressed or something?”

“I dealt with a lot of that growing up, Dean,” he says, and Dean looks genuinely surprised. “I know our family has a reputation in the neighborhood for being a little… out there, and I didn’t know what it was like for you at school. Kids can be mean.”

“You did?” Dean asks, words coming out of his mouth almost before he seems to even realize he’s asking. “You could beat up _anyone_ at my age. I know you said you had a late growth spurt, but you could still fight, right?”

“I could, yeah. But I put up with it. I wanted to be normal,” Sam says, and glances back over at his son with a wistful look. There’s a lot of himself in Dean, he hears it all the time from friends and strangers, and can sometimes see it himself. Same strong nose, sharp jaw, proclivity towards avoiding haircuts and burying themselves in a book. But he’s so different too, in ways that mostly make Sam feel he’s doing something right. He doesn’t carry guilt around like a weight on his shoulders the way Sam did when he was 15, he seems at peace with himself in a way Sam’s not sure he’s _ever_ been, even now; he doesn’t seem as though he feels like an outsider in his own family. Sam’s not going to give himself too much credit, but he’s trying his best. Jack turned out okay, after all.

“I don’t care about being ‘normal,’” Dean says, putting his phone in his lap just to emphasize the air quotes around normal before picking it right back up. He says it flippantly, like it really doesn’t matter that much to him. 

They lapse into periods of quiet, occasionally passing a few words back and forth about the highway or how summer is going. This is part of what makes drives with his son so quietly joyous - Sam wasn’t sure he’d find silence as comfortable ever again. Three hours in though, Sam notices Dean pull out his earbuds, and expects his son to say something. Instead, he just stares straight ahead for a moment, looking like he’s thinking intensely about something before he finally starts talking.

“Hey, I know it’s fine, because I know you’re really close to Aunt Charlie and her wife and Claire has a girlfriend but,” Dean says, speaking faster than normal, like if he gets them out into the space between them quick enough he won’t have a chance to stop himself. “There is a boy at school I think I like. His name is Abe. I just wanted you to know.”

“Okay,” Sam says after a moment of considering if he should press for more information or make something big out of it before deciding against.

“That’s it?”

“I mean, you were right, it’s fine,” he says, trying his best to not sound dismissive; he just doesn't want Dean to have to worry that it changes anything. “I dated some boys before I met your mom.”

"Really?" Dean finally turns away from the road ahead to look at his dad for a second, and Sam glances back over at him in turn.

"Yeah," Sam says, relieved when he sees the tension in his son’s shoulders relax a bit. 

"Huh," is all Dean replies with, and he doesn't say anything else for a little bit. He looks out the window as farms that all look the same fly by, and Sam guesses the quiet is more from Dean trying to process the new information than anything else. 

“My earbuds died, can I put on music?” Dean asks about fifteen minutes later, and Sam doesn’t actually think he was expecting that conversation to continue, but he still smiles at the incongruity.

“Sure,” Sam says. The car is still the same old compact he bought right after meeting Dean’s mom, probably the only Honda this well-equipped to fight monsters, and he’s refused to replace it. It’s not as ostentatious as the Impala was ( _is_ , he reminds himself), and sometimes it’s less practical too. But he’s attached, not in quite the same way his brother was to Baby, but the way you can get attached to familiarity and comfort. It took Dean a few months before he could wear Sam down enough to replace the radio when he turned 12 and decided he wouldn’t put up with not being able to play music from his phone. It still had a cassette player when they took it out and put the new one in together.

Dean's phone connects to the radio and begins playing music that Sam dimly remembers hearing in college, or on the college stations he'd tune into when driving on his own. It's rock, but definitely more modern than the records from his brother’s collection that they still put on around the house sometimes.

"Who's the band?" he asks.

“This _super_ old band Elliott told me about. They’re called Fall Out Boy, they were kinda big _way_ before I was born. I like them even though they’re kinda outdated.”

Having a teenager makes Sam feels so, _so_ old sometimes.

◎

The address Max texted him leads them to a house that seems surprisingly normal at first; given that his own house seems that way too at first glance, maybe Sam’s surprise is a little undeserved. It’s a small white house with a quaint porch tucked deep away in the woods a bit north of St. Cloud, down a winding dirt road that takes them away from the highway and past a lake. Sam realizes that something is off immediately, even in the dark - the headlights flash on a sign telling the reader to look at a realtor’s website if they’re interested in renting it and the car parked out front is a rental too.

“I trust Max,” Sam says as he parks next to it, and he means it. “He’s a good man who went through a lot. But stay behind me when I knock on the door, and I’m gonna give you a pistol when we get the stuff out of the trunk, for a worst-case scenario. Got it? Remember how to use it?”

Dean nods, and they open the car doors simultaneously.

True to his word, Dean stays a few feet behind him as they walk up to the house, and Sam doesn’t reach out towards the door until he's turned around and checked that Dean’s put a little distance between them. 

He knocks.

Max looks exactly the same as Sam remembers him looking 20 years ago, right down to the hairstyle, when he opens the door. For a second, Sam is self-conscious of his laughter lines and his graying hair; the feeling passes and he’s suddenly _concerned_ at how young the witch looks. Natural witches _can_ hold onto their youth, of course, he thinks of Rowena and the brief moments where he was aware of how long she’d been alive. But there’s always a price to magic like that, and there’s a look in Max’s eyes that sets Sam on edge right away. He looks haunted.

“Max,” he manages to get out, and he walks forward with an uncertain hand held out. Max takes it, shakes it with a loose grip. “It’s been awhile.” 

“It has,” Max replies, and he gives Sam a smile that he’s straining to keep up. “How are you?” Sam notices he’s peering around him to get a look at Dean, so he steps to the side.

“I’m good. Max, this is - this is my son Dean,” Sam says, putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder. The teen is standing on the steps stiffly, hands shoved in his jeans pockets, but he dutifully shuffles forward to be introduced. Sam watches his son’s expression in profile carefully, unsure if he’s picked up on the same worries that he has regarding Max’s countenance. 

“Named for…?” Max trails off, realizing the answer is so obvious he shouldn’t be asking. Dean looks away, clearly uncomfortable with the way the witch is searching his face for any sign of his uncle in his features.

“Of course,” Sam says, and gives Dean’s shoulder a little squeeze. Most of the hunters who’ve drifted in and out of Dean’s life since he was born are better about this now, they know that Dean might be named after his uncle but don’t try to look at him and find the man that died before he was born. Occasionally a new face will come into their life, one who only knows the name “Dean Winchester” through stories about angels and devils and ends of the world, but Sam’s always tried to make sure Dean knows the difference between being hidden in a shadow and being a legacy. _But Max might as well be a stranger_ , he has to remind himself.

“Well, hey, come on in,” Max says, and steps back through the threshold into the house. Sam is struck by how… dull it is. How little it seems lived in. He remembers the twins as eclectic and warm, but looking around the front hall and kitchen Sam doesn’t see a single thing that feels like it’s Max’s. 

“You want a beer, Sam? Dinner should be ready in a minute or two, pasta and vegan ragú, pull up a seat."

“Sure,” Sam says, and drops his bag by the doorway. Dean follows him into the kitchen, close enough to that Sam hears it when he whispers.

“Does he seem weird to you?” he asks, and Sam glances up to see if Max seems to have heard, then nods quickly. He sits down at the table and looks towards Dean to follow his lead. 

“So,” Max says, as he hands Sam a bottle of beer and puts a plate out in front of Dean, who’s sitting stiffly at the table. “You taking up the family business?”

“Uh, not really,” Dean says, picking up his fork. Sam doesn’t jump in as Max puts another plate in front of him, but watches carefully in case he needs to. “Not yet. I know enough to keep myself safe and I like learning spells. But I think I want to study physics.”

“Spells?" Max asks, swirling spaghetti around his fork. "You gonna be a witch?"

"Not so much. We're being careful, taking it slow. Sticking to simple protection spells for now," Sam says, sliding into the conversation. "Magic is a little more dangerous when you're not born a natural witch."

"Right," Max says, and he suddenly looks a little uneasy. "Well, Winchester, catch me up."

Sam does, in a manner of speaking. He skims over Chuck and Jack and basically all the years around 2020, takes the condolences for his brother with a thin smile and as little detail as possible, talks more about the other hunters who are still out there working than his own trifling list of cases. Max clears the dishes, brings out more beers and a coke for Dean, and doesn’t say anything about himself.

"Dean, are you tired?" Sam asks after a bit, aware that Dean will correctly translate that as ‘let me talk to Max alone.’ “We woke up early.” Dean looks a little miffed, and doesn’t reply right away, but Sam gives him a _look_ , and he fakes a yawn. It’s not going to win him any Oscars, but it could be worse.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he says, and watches Max get up and point Dean down the hall to one of the guest rooms. When the witch comes back to the table and sits down in front of Sam, he seems deflated, energy sapped by the performance of interest and enthusiasm he’s been putting on for the last two hours. Max crosses his arms and closes his eyes for a second, and Sam gives him a moment to breathe before he cuts to the point.

“Do you want to tell me why you called me here?” Sam asks, and Max opens his eyes.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a kid.” 

“You didn’t tell me not to bring my kid. You didn’t actually tell me much at all, and still haven’t,” Sam says, trying to not let his frustration with how in the dark he is overcome the fact that he’s there as a favor to an old friend. One who he let down. “And that’s not the point. Max, what _happened_?” 

Max presses his lips together and reaches under the collar of his shirt to grab a thin silver chain. It's threaded through a ring that doesn't _look_ familiar, but Sam knows enough about what happened in that room while Alicia bled out in his arms that it only takes him a second to piece together what must have happened after they left Wyoming.

"Max, _no_."

"Yeah," Max says, with a shift in expression that makes Sam think he considered apologizing for a half second before laying out the fact of the matter.

"Was it… Alicia?"

"She was fine with it," Max says, and it’s strange - in Sam's mind, he's always remembered Max as… lighter. Even though the last time they saw him he was walking back to the bed and breakfast to burn his mother and his sister, Sam had always had a feeling Max would be okay. But maybe it was just hope, failed intuition, because Max’s presence is heavy and withdrawn as he talks about his sister. “Until she wasn’t.”

Silence floods the room for a second, and Max looks over at Sam expectantly, like he’s waiting for Sam to yell, or say how disappointed he is, or for any reaction at all. He doesn’t say anything, tries his best to keep his expression neutral, and Max continues after the lull lasts just long enough to be uncomfortable. “It really was her. Her memories, her personality. I kept it a secret for a week because I didn’t know how to tell her, and then she broke her arm in the car door because she was so brittle, and sticks poked out.” Sam has a strong stomach, but he has to take a deep breath to let his nausea pass at that image. “She was upset, but she was more upset about our mom than about being… not human.”

"I could have controlled her with the ring, but I never did, I _swear_. We went on with our lives, we hunted sometimes, tried to run in different circles, people who wouldn't be surprised to see us both alive, you know?" Max is rubbing his hands together as he talks, a nervous tic that Sam focuses on to avoid making eye contact. "Lived in L.A. for a bit. I only used the magic to fix her up when she was injured, nothing else, but she got sick of it. She got mad that she didn't have any choice, that she was stuck with me, said that I might as well have been controlling her. And she got more and more upset and angry, until-" Max chokes up. "She ripped her own heart out, right in front of me. Year and a half ago." Max says, and he looks ill as he says it. “Her ribs - they broke so _easily_.”

“Max... how are you still young?” Sam asks, after taking a moment to process that image and the implications. He knows he has to ask, knows it’s important as a hunter and as a friend, but he desperately doesn’t want to know the answer. Magic like that always comes with a price.

“It’s not important - ”

“- Max, if you want my help, I need to know - ”

“- it’s _not_ important -”

“ - Max -”

“- it’s not important because I want you to shoot me,” Max gets out, and Sam suddenly forgets how to talk. “So I hope you brought some of those fancy bullets. If you somehow know how to break the borrower’s spell on me, shit, I’ll take it. But I can’t go on without her anymore. I’d rather deal with hell.”

"I'm not going to _shoot_ you, Max,” Sam says, strangely relieved to have something he knows how to handle. The request is distressing, but he at least knows what to say. “I know you didn’t ask me to drive ten hours to put a bullet through your head. So answer the question.”

"Men," Max says simply after a moment, looking furiously subdued at Sam’s immediate and visceral refusal to hurt him. "Went to bars and planted hex bags on them after we got cozy, cast a spell that took a few years off their life. I wanted to put a buffer between me and death after she died. I was scared, I panicked."

"Did any of them die?"

"Not in front of me," Max says cooly, and Sam runs his hands through his hair restlessly before folding them in front of himself. It’s not the worst answer, but it’s not the answer he was hoping for. After a moment, Max speaks again, apparently trying to cushion Sam’s fears a bit. “ _Probably_ not. It was excruciating, but most of them were young guys. They’ll die earlier, but not soon.”

 _Most of them_ , Sam thinks, trying not to think too hard about the implications of that, how much five years or so can mean in the big picture of someone’s life. “Do you know the name of the demon the witch in Wyoming had a deal with?”

Max shakes his head, looking more and more fed up with Sam’s questions and prodding. “No clue. I just know it’s next in line for my soul.”

“We’ll figure out something,” Sam says. “We will. There’s gotta be a way to get you out of the deal.” 

“I stole years off of people’s lives,” Max says, and he says it like he’s _trying_ to sound unbothered by it, and it isn’t working. He sounds desperate. “I’m a witch, you kill witches like me. Just get it over with.”

“You’re a person, Max. And I’m partially to blame for this. If we had figured out what was going on with your mom faster -”

“And how are you going to get me out of the deal?” Max asks, challenging him before he can even finish his apologia for why he can’t just let Max _die_ here. “I made a bad choice, but I’m not an idiot. You don’t think I’ve looked? What do _you_ think you’ll be able to do to help me get out of a borrower deal that I couldn’t find myself?”

“I’m not a witch, but I’m not _incompetent_ ,” Sam shoots back, his frustration and confusion coming out as defensiveness. “And I inherited the belongings of one of the most powerful witches who ever lived, so yeah, we might have something at the Bunker that can help.”

Max doesn’t look happy, but he also looks defeated, and out of arguments for the moment. “Fine,” he says. There’s no flippant jokes, no smiles to try and make it less uncomfortable, just steely resignation. “If you think there’s a chance, I’ll go with you tomorrow to your little cave in Kansas. I’m fucking going to bed.” He stands up from the table, starts to leave the room without another word.

“Max, wait.” He waits. 

“I think you did the right thing by not using the magic anymore,” Sam starts, trying to make it clear that despite his complicated feelings, Max doesn’t deserve to _die_ , that he didn’t drive all the way here to play judge, jury, and executioner. “But - you could have brought her back with the ring. Why didn’t you?”

“She said not to,” Max says, and it’s the most hollow Sam’s heard him sound all night. “I thought she deserved to decide that much at least. She said it always ends bad.” 

And isn’t that familiar.

◎

They sleep in the next morning - at least Sam does, since Dean thinks 9:00 AM is the crack of dawn for him now that he’s out of school.

When he gets dressed and rouses Dean, he looks at Sam like he’s crazy when he says that they’re heading right back to Kansas. “We drove all the way up here so you could _talk_?”

“Sorry, kiddo” he says with a sympathetic shrug. _Ten hours really isn’t_ that _long_ , he thinks, but Dean hasn’t grown up in a car the way he did, so he lets it be. “Like I told your mom, it was more of a personal thing than a real case. But we need to see if there’s anything in the bunker that can help.”

Max drives separately, taking the rental car and the small bag that he says is all he keeps with him. Sam’s not entirely sure Max was _actually_ renting the house, or just squatting with the help of a little magic to get it up and running. The drive is longer this time, since there’s no major highways to hop on to get directly to Lebanon.

“Don’t get mad at me," Dean starts after a meager 30 minutes driving past lakes and woods.

"Bad start, Dean."

"...I overheard you and Max talking yesterday after you told me to go sleep, and… Did you and mom only have me because you didn’t want me to lose a sibling the way you and Max did?” Dean asks, and Sam quickly looks away, stares straight ahead for a second, trying to fight off tears he was wholly unprepared to deal with. Kids, generally, aren’t ones to hold back on questions, and Dean has _always_ been inquisitive, but _christ_. Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever be used to this part of parenting, not even with 18 cumulative years of it under his belt. It knocks the air out of his lungs.

“You _have_ a brother,” Sam says quickly, more to give himself time to collect himself than as an actual answer to his son’s question. Dean knows about Jack - well, knows Sam raised Jack as a son, and knows that he’s somewhere else now, doesn’t quite know that the god his dad prays to sometimes is him.

“That’s not what I mean,” Dean says, insulted that Sam is talking to him like a child. _He has a right to be_ , Sam thinks, knowing he can’t keep delaying by being deliberately obtuse, and takes a deep breath.

“It’s not the reason, but I did think about it sometimes after we’d decided,” he admits. Amber was an only child, who was perfectly content with having an only child, but Sam’s instantly reminded of all the times he watched Dean play by himself and remembered his brother putting up with him jamming legos into shoes, into the ashtray. The fantasies they’d construct and play out of having a house, a normal job like they saw on TV, and a mom, while they were left alone in a motel room. After dropping Dean off for his first day of high school, he had to blink away tears remembering that his brother did the same, because he’d decided to skip class that day but sure as hell wasn’t gonna let his little brother do it. “Your uncle was really, really important to me. And I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if he hadn’t been around to protect me.”

“From the things you hunted?”

“Partially. But more than just that,” Sam says, and steadies himself. There’s a lot his son and wife know about Sam’s life before them. Most of it, honestly - some details strain credulity even for people who know there’s monsters out there, and those he leaves out but never _actively_ avoids. The stuff he’s tried hard _not_ to bring up is less... earth shattering. It’s closer. 

“Your Granddad John… he wasn’t a good father. He was a good hunter. He saved a lot of people, he taught us a lot, but he hurt us a lot too. And a lot of times, Dean kept me away from the worst of it. Most of our lives, we really only had each other to count on. I’ve lost a lot of people, but losing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. And I guess I am grateful you won’t know that feeling, because I don’t like thinking about you getting hurt, even though I know you'll still lose people in other ways. Does that make sense?"

“Yeah,” Dean says, and Sam doesn’t push him to answer any more than that. 

“How much of that conversation did you hear, anyways?” Sam can’t help but ask a few minutes later, since he hadn’t noticed Dean leaving the guest room at all, let alone during that conversation.

“Enough.”

“We need to have a talk about your eavesdropping when we get back home,” Sam says, and he tries to be stern but his heart isn’t in it. Dean’s a Winchester, and Sam sometimes thinks not being able to mind your own business is written into the Winchester genetic code.

Dean drifts off somewhere outside of Grand Island, Nebraska, an impressive feat considering the sun is still shining right in his face. He's lulled off by whatever’s playing through his earbuds and the faint murmur of the NPR Sam has on the car radio. He reaches over and flips the visor down so the sun isn’t shining right in his son’s face, and turns the radio up a little so he can talk out loud without Dean hearing if he wakes up before they reach the bunker.

“Hey Jack,” he says, and Sam finds himself smiling as he says his son’s name, a small, private upturn of his lips as they barrel down the highway. He hasn’t always found comfort in it - there were days, years ago, where he wanted to scream and cry when he sat down to pray, where he unfairly felt like the new god must be as cruel as the last one if He could leave Sam this alone. Sometimes he still finds it hard to keep his composure, but he knows he’s forgiven. “I know I tell you this all the time, but I’m so glad I had a test run on raising you before we had Dean.” Sam glances fondly at his sleeping son and laughs softly, quiet enough that the teenager doesn’t stir.

“Today’s rough,” Sam admits after a moment. “I think part of it is because what Max and Alicia had is so close to what Dean and I did - he did something stupid and dangerous to save whatever part of her he could, right? And I want to be mad at him for the things he’s done, but I don’t know if I can, really. Because when I was his age, or even older, I know I would have done the same thing. I did _worse_ for Dean.” Far off in the distance, Sam can see the dark grey of a summer stormline moving through, and a single flash of blue-white lightning. He lets himself indulge in the human need to find pattern and meaning in the world around them.

“You really are the best of us,” Sam says quietly. “You saw the best in all of us - all of humanity, even. I try to, and I think I usually do alright at it. And I think Max is still good, even knowing the shit he's done. But I don’t completely know what the right thing to do here is.”

He looks out across the road, picks a point in the clouds right over the horizon to make apologetic eye contact with, though he knows anywhere would do. "Sorry to pray to you just to complain though. I hope you're doing okay, say hey to Cas for me. Not much else has been going on now that school's out for Dean. We rewatched _A New Hope_ the other day, I thought you'd appreciate that. He still likes Han more than Luke, but I do think he’ll like Ahsoka when we get around to watching Clone Wars. I'm reading a book Eileen - she's good, by the way - mailed me the other day, and I have no idea where she finds this stuff…"

He worries at first that there's not much for them to talk about, but he finds a way to fill up the rest of the drive with conversation; chatting softly as they drive through the storm and cross the state line back into Kansas. It feels a bit like old times.

◎

The bunker is empty when Sam pushes the door open and the three of them walk in together, but Claire or some other hunter must have been through recently - there’s a pair of abandoned beer bottles on the map table and a week-old meatball sub going bad in the fridge.

"We'll probably have to spend the night," Sam says, relieved that he only feels mild stress at the idea instead of the stabbing grief that used to revisit him during nights here. "Any room's fine except for 11 or 21, they should be unlocked." Sam emptied out the few belongings that Jack and Cas had accumulated in their rooms ages ago, but he still doesn't let anyone stay in his brother’s room. It's still too much his.

"Sounds good, Winchester," Max says, and tosses his backpack onto the map and pulls out a chair. 

"Good. Great," Sam says, and hoists his own bag higher up on his shoulder. "I'm going to go look at a book that I think might be able to help, and we can scrounge up dinner later."

"I'm coming," Dean says, and scurries down the stairs, getting in front of Sam before he can say anything else or try to stop him.

“Okay, but only because this trip was supposed to be a learning experience, alright?” Sam says, and steps around his son and leads them down the hall after Dean gives a quick affirmative nod. When they reach the door to room 7B, he pulls out a keyring and carefully selects a thin key that’s mottled with a blue-gold patina. It’s one of the few keys he hasn’t passed on any copies of to other hunters. “I don’t want you touching anything, especially not the Book.” 

The curse box is in a safe hidden behind books on the lowest shelf in the room, and he tries to ignore the stiffness in his knees as he kneels down to get it out, then stands back up to push the shelves open. They swing open to reveal the back of a room that hasn’t changed at all in the last twenty years: the chair still sits in the middle of the devil’s trap, the table that he puts the box down onto is still pushed to the side, and there’s still those bloodstains on the concrete that Sam never really asked his brother about before he died. 

Sam pulls his glasses out of his bag and puts them on, then opens the laptop with the decryption program written by Charlie all those years ago (and updated by the other Charlie periodically since then). He unlocks the curse box with another key on the ring, and gingerly pulls out the _Book of the Damned_ , all while Dean looks on from a few feet away, curious but rightfully uneasy.

"It’s called the _Book of the Damned_ , we inherited it from a witch. This is probably the most dangerous book in the world, in the wrong hands,” Sam explains, trying to convey with his tone that while he’s not exaggerating its danger in the least, Dean shouldn’t panic about it being open on the table in front of him. 

“It was Rowena’s?” Dean asks, making an educated guess based on the stories Sam has told him over the years. Sam nods, deliberately not mentioning that for some time she was ‘the wrong hands’ they had to worry about. 

“She was the last owner, at least. It’s old.” He’s not sure what kind of spell he's looking for as he unfolds the codex - a summoning that will let him talk to Rowena and leverage her influence? Something that will snap the connection between that ring and Max and the demon with brute force magic? Sam knows objectively that the _Book of the Damned_ is static; there’s no magic in its construction that switches the spells around each time the book is opened. But despite its grim origins, the Book showed them the solution to their problem right when they needed it more than once. Rowena taught him that a lot of magic is in the interpretation and intentionality, and he holds onto that lesson as he looks down and starts inputting symbols into the program.

Dean watches closely for a while, then sits down on the chair in the middle of the devil’s trap and rests his chin in his hands and watches, and after an hour pulls his phone out and starts to type away at it with occasional glances up at the table Sam doesn’t even notice the shifting interest at first, he’s so engrossed in the work, but smiles when he finally looks up. He’s unsurprised that the 15 year-old didn’t have the patience involved in watching someone silently flip through a book and type into a laptop, even a 15 year old with a pretty developed interest in magic.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?” his son sits up quickly, turning off his phone like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. 

“Do you want to go check on Max and make me some coffee? It might be a few more hours,” he says, and Dean practically jumps out of the chair.

“Can I get a pizza?” Dean says, and Sam nods. “You can take money out of my wallet. Just remember -”

“- you have to pick it up a quarter mile down the road, near the intersection because they can’t deliver to the bunker, I know.”

It’s 7:00 PM when Dean brings him a cup of coffee and he stops to check the time, it’s 11:07 when Dean pokes his head in to say goodnight and he’ll be in room 17 if he needs help with anything, it’s 11:34 when his laptop dies and he has to dig through his bag for the charger, 20 past midnight when he gets back from making himself a second cup of coffee and it’s 1:14 when he finally realizes that he might have a solution.

“Puzzle box,” he mutters to no one, pushes his glasses up onto the top of his head and nearly knocks over his third cup of coffee in his haste to stand up.

Max is in the library when Sam finally reemerges from the dungeon, a half eaten slice of pizza on the plate next to him. He has a book open in front of him, but he’s staring at something in the middledistance, unfocused. 

“I’ve got something,” Sam says, and Max only looks up when Sam is close enough to realize that he’s gazing across the table to where initials and names are carved into the wood. He has to drag his own eyes away from them. “Come with me.”

◎

In total, the series of spells take two hours to cast. The first hour is spent digging through storage and painstakingly gathering the deeply strange and rare ingredients the simulacrum calls for - how on earth the Men of Letters knew that one day someone in here would need “dust of the horn of a nubian goat charred under a full moon” is beyond him, but he dumps the powder into a gold bowl with the rest of the herbs he prepared.

“Next is -” he starts, but Max is already drawing a silver blade across his hand and squeezing blood into the mixture before Sam can even get the request out. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s enough.”

Most of the second hour is spent in an uncomfortable silence. They stand on opposite sides of the room, watching the ground as an exact replica of Max begins to materialize where the contents of the bowl were spilled inside the devil’s trap and a spell from the _Book of the Damned_ was cast over it.

“Sure this will work?” Max asks, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. 

“Hypothetically,” Sam says. “The timing between the spells needs to be just right, but I think I can do it.”

“You do this Enochian stuff often?” 

“I don’t do any of it often,” Sam replies, and looks across the room at him. Max lets out a hollow laugh at that, dampened by the concrete walls.

“Can’t believe you got out, man,” he says, and Sam doesn’t bother to correct him that he’s not really _out_ , not in the way hunters usually mean when they talk about getting out of the life. It’s still everywhere - the wardings around his suburban house, the necklace his son wore to school every day from Pre-K to high school, the tattoo his son got as soon he could handle the pain, in the daily news he still compulsively searches for aberrations in - so no, he doesn’t really feel like he’s out. But he knows how it seems from the outside.

“But I didn’t use it all that often back in the day either. Enochian is tricky,” Sam says, and sidesteps the witch’s comment, which results in a grimly amused look from Max that he chooses to also ignore. “I’m still fluent, and with boxes like this, it’s much more of an activation than a new spell. But the costs of some Enochian spells can be… rough.”

“Cool.”

They lapse into silence again, and Sam tries to ignore it and focus on the almost-complete body on the ground until he can’t, and he busies himself with locking the _Book of the Damned_ and the Codex back up. 

“So do you want to kill me, or should I kill me?” Max says with an acerbic smile once the simulacrum created to trick the demon has finished forming, a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes and Sam doesn’t return. He knows Max’s empty laughter is the witch’s way of coping with this, but Sam can’t bring himself to reciprocate any of it.

“I’ll do it. You should be at least a few feet away from the devil’s trap since it’s you that it’s seeking out,” Sam says and unholsters his pistol, running through the steps in his mind once more. _Kill the simulacrum, summon the demon when it comes to collect, shove it in the puzzle box_. Keenly aware of Max’s eyes on the back of his head, he takes aim at the thing that looks exactly like him, and shoots it in the head. 

Sam knows that the clock started ticking the second the bullet went through the simulacrum’s head, but as the blood starts to pool on the floor, he can’t resist the need to turn around and confirm that _yes_ , Max is still standing there, breathing and watching his every move. “ _Attenrobendum eos, ad ligandum eos,_ ” he begins, trying to push away the revulsion he feels looking at the Max-simulacrum’s open eyes staring up at him. _“Potiter eos, coram me.”_

The empty eyes briefly shimmer black, and the body crumbles, filling the room with the scent of sulfur. In a fraction of a second, a writhing cloud of black smoke rushes up from where the body used to be, and Sam launches into the second half of the spell.

“ _Uh-nah uh-ray, Uh-ray uh-nah_ ,” he intones, trying to keep the Enochian as steady as possible as the black smoke thrashes around within the bounds of the devil’s trap, panicking now that it’s realized it has no host to take hold of. Each syllable seems to constrict the demon a little more, compressing it into a dense, swirling column. “ _Uh-nah uh-ray, Uh-ray uh-nah -_ Max, the puzzle box, now!” he says, and catches the small cube when Max throws it his way, holding it over the outer circle of the devil’s trap. “ _Uh-nah uh-ray, Uh-ray uh-nah-_ ” 

The box lets out a soft _whirr_ in Sam’s hands, gently clicks, then pops open. The demon is siphoned into it by an invisible energy that Sam can’t see but _feels_ as he struggles to hold the box steady. It only takes a few seconds before the smoke has fully disappeared into the box; Sam calls out the last two syllables, “ _Voh-rah_ ,” and it clicks shut. He stumbles back a bit as the force he was pushing against to keep the puzzle box still finally disappears, but holds it close to his chest and doesn’t let it fall to the ground.

He places the box down on the table carefully, and turns to Max. “Give me the ring.” Max complies, and Sam places it on the ground and shoots it. Nothing happens as it shatters into hundreds of pieces, which Sam suspects is a good sign. Silently, he gathers up the larger pieces, picks up the curse box, and puts them both into the safe as Max stands by and watches with his arms crossed. In the back of his mind, Sam faintly wonders what time it is and if the gunshots woke up Dean, a parental concern that feels deeply incongruous with what’s just occurred in this room.

“It’s done,” Sam says once the warded safe is closed and locked, and there’s not even a flicker of relief on Max’s face. “I don’t know if destroying the ring after I bound the demon technically broke the contract, but at the very least it can’t come collecting.”

"Still might end up in hell," Max says after a minute, but it’s not a statement of defeat as much as it is acceptance, which Sam frowns at. "But at least it's not a done deal now." Sam isn't sure what Max is doing at first when the witch turns around to face the wall, and is then much too sure when he raises his arms up and puts them in front of his head.

"Turn around,” he orders with a sigh, and there’s no sternness in his voice, just weariness. “I'm not going to shoot you, Max. I told you." Max lowers his arms and turns around, frowning, and Sam lets the magazine of his gun fall to the floor with a clatter. 

“You did it once already.”

"And I'm not going to give you any bullets,” Sam continues, not dignifying that with a response. “And I'm not gonna give you the recipe for them. Because I know that you could figure them or another way to die out on your own. But you _haven't_."

Max glares at him, expression somewhere between furious and crushed. "I'll get another hunter to kill me," he threatens, blinking tears away from his bloodshot eyes. "You know how much damage I could do, even without the ring. It’s not hard to get their attention."

"Then why did you call _me_ , Max?" Sam says. "You spent all that time finding a number that's 20 years old and hasn't been called in a decade, and I _suspect_ used some magic to make sure the phone was charged, just so that I was the one who showed up instead of some other hunter."

"Because I didn't think you'd be a _coward_ afraid of doing the right thing, _Winchester_ ," Max says, and he spits out the name like it’s as much of an insult as coward is.

"Max -"

"I _hurt_ people. My own _sister_ couldn't bear to be around me because of the deal I made to save her. Me calling you wasn’t about my fucking _deal!_ If I was afraid of dying, I could keep stealing years forever! What do I have to live for without her? Tell me, Winchester. You have a kid, a _family_ -"

"You think I woke up the day after I burned my brother's body and decided to have a kid?" Sam asks, trying not to give into Max's provocations but still feeling his anger swell. "Fuck no. I was a mess, Max. For _years_. I still can't drive his car. I can't listen to half of the music he played without crying because it only makes me think of him."

"So it never gets better?" Max asks, pointing a finger at Sam’s chest, and Sam has to hold himself back from pushing him away. "Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes!" Sam says, finally giving in and raising his voice. "And that's just how it is! You don’t stop missing them, but you wake up and you get through the day and you find reasons to keep waking up. You make them up if you have to. You don't get to hurt people to find an easy way out!" he says, exhaling, lowering his voice. "It's _hard._ It's really fucking hard. And it's _worth_ it."

Max stares at Sam, furious for another second, and then his face crumples, and he falls to his knees. He knows it’s mostly false youth, that Max is really only ten years younger than him at most, but Sam feels a lifetime older than the witch as he crouches down to place a steadying hand on his back through his sobs.

"I know," he finds himself saying. "I'm sorry."

◎

"What if he hurts people again?" Dean asks as they stand outside the bunker the next morning and watch Max drive away, rental car headed to parts unknown. 

"He might," Sam admits. It’s happened with cases before, even if he hasn't been thinking about Max as a case. Max didn't want to stay in the bunker any longer than he absolutely had to, which was fair, but Sam made sure he left with a functional way to contact him and a promise that he'd be there if Max called. 

"And it would be my responsibility if he did. But… I want to believe he'll do the right thing. I hope he will." He thinks about the mistakes he and his brother made to keep each other alive, against their own best interests, against the _world’s_ best interests, the endless circles they ran in trying to make up for it. 

He thinks about Jack saying that when people have to be their best, they can be. _Keep an eye on him_ , he prays silently.

“Is it always this hard?” Dean asks, and Sam doesn’t know what part of it he’s referring to, but the answer is the same.

“Yeah,” Sam replies, and he feels Dean’s gaze shift to him as Max’s car takes a sharp left and vanishes behind a stand of trees. “Most of the time.”

“But it’s worth it,” Dean says, and it’s not a question. Just a statement.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and smiles a little at that. “It is.” He looks down at his son. “Ready to go home?”

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, HUGE thanks to sophie for 1. reading through this before posting 2. putting up with my wordcount updates over the past few days 3. being the same kind of insane as me so that when i said "i want sam's gay witch son to meet max banes, the other gay witch in the show" her immediate reaction was to tell me to write this 
> 
> i'm really deeply proud of this fic, which turned out completely different than i thought it would. it's the first time i've written anything even close to this long for supernatural, and i'm proud that i went where it took me. i love comments love feedback thank you for reading this weird long strange thing!
> 
> the title comes from the only thing by sufjan stevens, carrie & lowell is basically the soundtrack i recommend listening to while you read this. i'm tube_ebooks on twitter! follow me for 15x20 defense tweets


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